The received wisdom in some Android-loving circles is that iPhones are for those concerned more with style than substance. The response from fans of Apple's smartphone would be that Android handsets are poorly made substitutes for those who cannot afford iPhones. The Gingerbread-toting Motorola Motoluxe proves the lie to both arguments, in both good and bad ways. But it is far from a 'luxe' device.

Take the style issue, for instance. Far from the budget Android handset of legend, the Motoluxe oozes quality and a certain class.

At just shy of 10mm thick it may not be the slimmest smartphone on the market, but it's not far off. At 125g it is light as well as thin, and it has that discernible feeling of quality in the hand. It's also an entirely pocketable smartphone. Not bad for the mid-level £15-£20 a month waters in which the Motoluxe swims (you can buy it SIM-free for around £200).

The Motoluxe is constructed of lightweight metal with a rubberised finish, so it feels sturdy as well as light. The battery is removable, too, but we did find that on occasion the slide off cover would, well, slide off at inopportune moments. Inside the Motoluxe you'll find a SIM slot as well as space to append a microSD card of up to 32GB. You'll want to - there's only 1GB of internal memory.

Motorola Monoluxe: battery life

Battery life is just okay, and we expected more from such a low-powered device. The Li-Ion 1400mAh is quoted by Motorola as offering around six and a half hours in use. This was at least born out by our tests of the Motoluxe: we actually squeezed out more time when we weren't hammering the device's video- and audio-players. Limit yourself to light email, occasional music listening and app use - and use Wi-Fi with care - and the Motoluxe won't let you down over the course of a working day.

As well as the four hardware buttons traditional in Android, a light at the bottom left of the Motoluxe's display lights up to notify you of incoming messages and so on. The Options, Home, Back and Search 'buttons' are touch sensitive areas on the bezel beneath the screen. There's volume rocker and camera button on the right-hand side, albeit one that requires the handset to be unlocked, as well as a micro USB port on the bottom left through which you charge the Motoluxe. Finally, there's a 3.5mm headphone jack and a power button at the top, above the display.

And a decent display it is. We liked the Motorola Motoluxe's 4in, edge-to-edge, FWVGA, capacitative touchscreen. Graphics are reasonably sharp, colours reasonably deep, and at this price point that seems reasonable to us. This is no Retina display, and it doesn't stack up alongside the best screens Samsung can offer. But it's good enough, and certainly responsive enough, especially when you consider that the Motoluxe sports only a single-core 800MHz processor.

Place the Motorola Motoluxe next to a Samsung Galaxy S3 or an iPhone 4S and it shapes up poorly. It packs middling specs and fair-to-middling performance into a stylish frame. But if you want a decent Android smartphone at a reasonable price, you could do worse.

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